Video: Split toning effects

I sometimes enjoy experimenting around with color effects within an image. And split toning is such an effect that can be a lot of fun to play with, and sometimes produces some very interesting effects in your photos. I've selected a photo here that I think might work well with the Split Toning effect. So I'll go ahead and scroll down on the right panel in the Develop module to get to the Split Toning controls. The idea of Split Toning is that we can apply a different color value to the highlights versus the shadows in the image. I'll go ahead and increase saturation for the highlights, and for the shadows.

In this workshop digital imaging guru Tim Grey focuses on the Develop module of Adobe Lightroom 4. Starting with an overview of the image optimization workflow in Lightroom, Tim walks you through the process of evaluating your images and deciding what adjustments you need to make. He teaches you how to use the Develop module's presets to achieve quick results, as well as how to apply your own adjustments, from simple exposure and color adjustments to advanced options like the Tone Curve and the Graduated Filter tool. Learn techniques for cleaning up your images, applying creative adjustments, and duplicating adjustments across multiple images. Finally, get some tips for integrating Lightroom and Photoshop to create panoramas and high dynamic range images.

Split toning effects

I sometimes enjoy experimenting around with color effects within an image. And split toning is such an effect that can be a lot of fun to play with, and sometimes produces some very interesting effects in your photos. I've selected a photo here that I think might work well with the Split Toning effect. So I'll go ahead and scroll down on the right panel in the Develop module to get to the Split Toning controls. The idea of Split Toning is that we can apply a different color value to the highlights versus the shadows in the image. I'll go ahead and increase saturation for the highlights, and for the shadows.

And then I'll shift the hue slider for the shadows. And you can see that we start to get an interesting result in the photo. We're adding a bit of color into the highlights. In this case, something of a magenta to red kind of a pinkish tone. And we're adding a little bit of a greenish tone into some of the darker areas. At the moment I'm actually blending that effect into the full colored image. But I can also convert the base image to black and white. Simply by moving up to the HSL color and black and white section, and clicking on the black and white option. I can fine-tune the result if I'd like.

In this case I think brightening up those yellows might help enhance contrast. I can continue fine-tuning those controls as I see fit. But I think we've got a pretty good starting point here. So I'll go back to my Split Toning controls and then I can adjust the hue and saturation for the highlights and the shadows independently. I think I'm going to start off by increasing saturation a little too much just so I can get a better sense of what colors I might like to use in this photo. I can slide the hues slider around and see what seems to work best for those highlights.

I actually kind of like that reddish almost slightly magenta effect in the highlights. And then for the shadows, I'll also move that hue around a little bit. And it seems like, as is often the case, a cooler tone for the shadows might be kind of nice. I think I'll go for something a little bit more toward that blue-cyan type of level. So, somewhere in there looks kind of interesting to me. It's giving the image a much more industrial look and of course it's an industrial image to begin with. I'll then adjust my saturation levels, in most cases bringing those levels down a fair amount.

Notice that as I adjust the saturation sliders, removing the saturation for the shadows, for example, the color in the highlight starts to become a little bit more prominent. So you'll often need to switch back and forth between those sliders as you work toward your final version of the photo. We can also adjust the balance between highlights and shadows. In other words at what point will a value be considered a highlight. And therefore it gets our highlight color, and at what point will it become a shadow getting the shadow color. If I move the balance slider over to the right, then I'll be assigning the highlight color to more pixel values within the image. If I move to the left I'll be assinging the shadows color to more areas of the image.

And so you can fine-tune a little bit to find just the right level. In this case, I think I want to keep the image a litle bit cooler. So I'm going to move the balanace over to the left in order to favor the shadows color a little bit more than the highlights color. But of course part of the fun of the Split Toning controls, is that you can experiment around, considerably, in order to find interesting ways to interpret your photos.

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